Problems
by 800 words of heaven
Summary: Teddy Lupin had many problems in his life. But his biggest problem? Victoire Weasley.
Teddy Lupin had many problems in his life.

His parents were dead, for one.

His grandmother could be a dragon, for another.

And he really sucked at Quidditch.

He couldn't play Wizard's Chess to save his life (and thank Merlin, he didn't need to, unlike his honorary uncle Ron).

He was practically tone deaf.

And his hair acted like a mood ring.

But his biggest problem?

Victoire Weasley.

Victoire and he had practically grown up together. Being the eldest two of the unruly Potter-Weasley clan (he was strictly honorary – the perks of being the godson of _the_ Harry Potter) had a way of pulling two people closer together. Victoire was his best friend, even though she was a year younger and they weren't in the same House.

But lately, things had been… weird between them.

When Victoire smiled at him as they passed each other in the corridors, his hair spontaneously turned green (he hadn't quite figured out what he was feeling when his hair was green, but he was pretty sure it didn't have to do with saving Mother Earth, like James once suggested).

When she waved at him from the Ravenclaw table when their eyes met at breakfast, his stomach went funny.

And by that, he meant that it dropped right out of his body and straight into the kitchens below their feet (this could be rather inconvenient if, say, one had other plans concerning their stomach, such as digesting recently consumed bacon and eggs).

When she laughed at one of the lame jokes he told her to help take her mind off impending doom at the hand of OWLs assessors ("impending doom" were her words, not his. Teddy had absolutely no trouble believing that Victoire would bring home eleven Outstandings), he could feel his face cracking into the stupidest grin ever to be seen on the face of a primate.

This also included those half-crazed smiles that chimpanzees did when they were in danger to warn their family (he'd spent quite a few nights babysitting Rose, whose current obsession was National Geographic).

But it got worse.

They'd never really had a lot of trouble talking to each other. Most of the time, they didn't really need to, because they knew each other so well (it helped that Teddy had known Victoire since she was a practically a foetus – not that he remembered that, considering he was just one at the time she was born, but he thought it was pertinent). But lately, Teddy had trouble talking to Victoire.

Hell, he had trouble forming a coherent sentence in his _brain_ sometimes.

It was just that Victoire was so… _Victoire_ , with her shiny blonde hair, and her bright chocolate eyes, and her rosy warm smile…

It was an amazement to Teddy that he'd never had this problem before now.

Victoire shoved him a little, shaking him from his thoughts.

"What?" Teddy's eyes looked wildly around for the horde of hippogriffs stampeding through the Great Hall. Upon not finding _any_ hippogriffs, stampeding or otherwise, in the vicinity, he met Victoire's amused gaze, and his hair promptly changed into a particularly bright shade of green.

She hadn't even _said_ anything, and his hair was acting up.

"Your hair is green," she said.

"I know," he replied. He didn't know _how_ , but he could always tell what his Metamorphmagus abilities were up to.

She smiled and shook her head. Teddy could feel his hair turning emerald.

He really needed to work out what the green hair meant. And then, how to stop it doing that.

"So, how's the Herbology essay going?" he asked, trying to divert the conversation away from his weird hair colour.

Victoire made a face. A pretty cute face, in Teddy's opinion, but he thought Victoire's face was pretty cute pretty much all the time. "Ugh. Herbology sucks," she pouted.

Teddy couldn't help but laugh. It amazed him that Victoire Weasley, Hogwarts' golden girl, couldn't keep even keep a _cactus_ alive for two weeks.

Granted, the cactus was carnivorous, with its favourite dish being mouse _à la_ alive and squirming, but still. It was a cactus. They practically looked after themselves.

"It can't be that bad! I got through it alive," Teddy tried to console.

Victoire glared at him. "Your cactus didn't try to bite off your finger, then promptly die _two hours_ before it had to be assessed."

"True. Although, I think my cactus stole my favourite quill."

She gave a reluctant smile.

He could feel the weirder-than-scared-chimpanzee smile bubbling up. He tried to tamp down on the urge.

 _Hard._

"So…" Victoire suddenly became very interested in the grain of the wooden table, tracing her finger lightly over it, her eyes following the movement. "It's Saturday tomorrow. Hogsmeade."

Teddy nodded mutely, momentarily entranced by the movement of Victoire's finger, although some part of his brain registered that what Victoire was saying didn't really make sense. Today was Friday. Tomorrow was Saturday. It wasn't like her to state the obvious.

Or utter sentences only containing one proper noun.

Damn! Even Victoire's _fingers_ were nice.

Was this sudden realisation concerning Victoire's fingers dangerous? Teddy thought that knowing his luck, it probably would be.

"Any plans?" she asked.

Teddy tore his eyes away from her finger and towards her face. She wasn't looking at him. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

Not a good sign.

It didn't take a Ravenclaw to know what was wrong with Teddy. He was surprised that he hadn't worked it out before. But now that he thought about it… the green hair, the disappearing stomach, the idiotic smile. _Clearly,_ he was coming down with a life-threatening disease.

 _Or_ … he was falling in love with Victoire Weasley.

Teddy really couldn't see the difference. Either way, he was doomed.

He realised that Victoire was still waiting for an answer.

He licked his suddenly dry lips.

He gulped.

He opened his mouth, then promptly shut it again, terrified that he'd just blurt out his recent revelation.

He tried again. This time, he managed to get some words out. "Um… no, not really."

"Oh." Was it his imagination, or did Victoire look disappointed?

"What about you? Any plans?" Bloody hell, what if she said that she had a date with some bloke, or something? He felt a little green at the idea, and it wasn't just his hair.

She shook her head. "No, not really."

They lapsed back into silence, turning towards their work.

Teddy wondered about that look of disappointment he may or may not have seen on Victoire's face. What could it mean?

Teddy also wondered about his newfound state of unrequited love. He obviously couldn't _tell_ Victoire. It would be like committing friendship suicide. _Especially_ considering that he was pretty sure that Victoire didn't think about Teddy in that way. Although, there _was_ that strange look just then…

But it was probably just his love-addled, hormone-marinated, adolescent brain imagining things.

"Well… I was thinking about…" Victoire started saying, quite out of the blue.

Teddy glanced over at her in surprise. Even through the haze of his love-addled, hormone-marinated, adolescent brain, he noticed the determined gleam in her eye. All he could think about was how _beautiful_ she looked.

"Thinking about what?" he managed to get out.

"Hogsmeade," she said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"You were thinking about… Hogsmeade?" Teddy tried to follow her train of thought. Clearly, he was missing something here.

She rolled her eyes. " _Yes_ , Hogsmeade. You know, how we were just talking about our plans this weekend?"

He blinked at her for a moment. "Yeah…"

"Well… I thought… I thought…" She looked right into Teddy's eyes.

Teddy's feeling about how he was missing something increased.

She sighed. "Never mind…"

"No!" Teddy said, perhaps a little too sharply, but he had to know. "Tell me."

She took a deep breath. "I thought, perhaps, that I'd go to Hogsmeade with… someone."

Teddy's shoulders fell. His heart sank.

Victoire wanted to go to Hogsmeade with someone. And that someone wasn't him. Of course.

"Oh?" He tried for an upbeat, interested tone, but he wasn't sure of his success.

"Um, yeah." Did she sound disappointed? Teddy was almost sure that he didn't imagine it this time.

"Who?" He didn't even bother trying this time. What was the point? He was destined to spend the rest of his life in love with the one girl he could never have. Destined to watch her meet the guy of her dreams, and fall in love, and get married, and have lots of perfect little babies –

"Um, you, actually," she replied in a small voice.

Teddy stopped thinking. As in, his brain shut down. All he could do was stare at her, his mouth hanging slightly open.

He watched as Victoire blushed, her cheeks and nose flushing an adorable shade of pink. "Sorry," she mumbled, her nose steadily becoming pinker. "Forget I said anything." She hastily turned away from him and began stuffing her Herbology homework into her bag.

Finally, _finally_ , Teddy's brain booted up again. "Wait!" he cried, but she was getting up from the table now.

Teddy began to feel a little panicked. He knew had to do something _right now_ , otherwise his morbid daydream about Victoire's perfect life with _someone else_ would become a morbid reality right before his eyes.

Impulsively, he grabbed her wrist as she walked past him. He felt a strange tingle run up his arm at the contact.

"Like a date?" he asked, looking at her face. He could see the tips of her ears had gone pink as well through the curtain of her hair, like they always did when she was embarrassed.

"Teddy, just forget I said anything, okay?" she said, trying to pull out of his grip. "It was stupid."

"Like a date, Victoire?" he asked again.

"Teddy… just… let it go."

But Teddy didn't want to let it go. This was his chance.

"I'll meet you after breakfast?" he asked. "We can walk down to the village together."

"What? Tomorrow?" she asked, looking a little bewildered.

He smiled, and prayed it wasn't his crazier-than-a-chimp smile. "Yes, Victoire. Tomorrow. Hogsmeade, remember?"

She continued to stare at me.

"Like a… like a date?" she asked tentatively.

Teddy felt his grin widen and his hair turn purple. It always turned purple when he was feeling happy. "Yeah, like a date."

Victoire smiled shyly down at him. "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow, then."

Teddy watched her leave the Great Hall, her full-to-bursting bag knocking into her leg with each step.

Teddy Lupin had many problems in his life.

His parents were dead.

His grandmother could be a dragon.

And he really sucked at Quidditch.

He couldn't play Wizard's Chess to save his life.

He was practically tone deaf.

And his hair acted like a mood ring.

But his favourite problem?

Victoire Weasley.


End file.
